Kiss with a Fist
by FearandLoathingXIX
Summary: They say that a kiss with a fist is better than none, but surely he could have picked someone just a little less likely to kill him before he convinced her to fall in love with him. Shinkumi.
1. You hit me once

And what's this? A new Shinkumi Gokusen fic? A CHAPTERED one?1 Madness!1!¬?

Yes I'm back and instead of a oneshot I appear to have started another chaptered story, this one to celebrate (mourn) the ending of the main manga storyline. This is of course, strictly mangaverse and attempts to be totally accurate to manga canon. So we'll see how we go.

The title is based of the Florence and the Machine song of the same name, but it's not a songfic, it is just a song that really captures a feeling I want to use.

EDITED FOR CANON CONSISTANCY THANK YOU ABI WHOEVER YOU ARE!

* * *

_A kick in the teeth is good for some, a kiss with a fist is better than none.  
_

* * *

Shin should have known that he was in trouble from the moment he stepped through the door of the Kuroda compound.

He had only visited their place a few times since he started at Toudai – mostly he'd been spending time with his friends and studying – but he had been in the area on this occasion and thought it would do Yankumi good to be reminded of his presence in the world. She was the sort of person who forgot about people if she didn't see them every day.

His first clue should have been that bastard dog Fuji making cut-throat gestures and pointing towards the street when he saw Shin wandering in, but he assumed the animal was just acting as weird as it'd ever been and ignored him.

The second sign he missed was Kudou 'the problem child' (#3) cowering underneath the foundations of the house as Shin stepped up to the front door. He reasoned that Kudou could be hiding for any number of reasons, and thought it unlikely that _his _actions of recent should have anything to do with it.

His last sign, and by far the one he should have taken heed of, was when he knocked on the door and Minoru opened it.

"Yo," he said coolly, slumping against the wall of the house. "How's it goin?"

"NO THANK YOU WE DON'T WANT ANY GARDEN REMODELLING TODAY!" the stout man bellowed so loud that Shin's hair ruffled. Shin was about to ask him what the hell he was talking about, when in a hushed, urgent voice Minoru hissed, "Get out!"

"What?" Shin replied quizzically.

"Run! Get out, master Red-lion sir," Minoru babbled nervously. "LOOK I TOLD YOU MR. GARDEN LANDSCAPING MAN!" he screamed again. "WE DO NOT WANT ANY-"

"Who is it?" Shin heard the voice of his former teacher from a little way inside. "Minoru? I'm coming ou-"

"NO NEED, OJOU!" Minoru turned and hollered. "IT IS JUST A KIND GENTLEMAN WONDERING IF WE WANTED TO REMODELL OUR..." It was at this point that Shin noticed Kyou standing on one corner of the house's roof, waving frantically in Shin's direction and pointing towards the way out.

"Hey Yamaguichi!" Shin decided to end this bizzare show before it got too carried away, and called out to her. "Why's everyone here acting so weir-WHOAH!" he yelped as Yankumi came flying out of the house feet first, narrowly missing him as he leapt out of the way.

"So it IS you!" she said triumphantly, punching Minoru in the back of the head without even bothering to look at him. "_That's _for lying to protect him," she scolded the injured gangster, and Shin just started to feel the kind of dread he _should _have been feeling since he set foot on the compound.

"Shin, I think you need to have a little heart to heart with your precious teacher," she told him sweetly, and he considered if there was any way he could get out of this situation, because trouble was coming his way and it was coming _fast_.

"I was just stopping by to say hi," he said quietly, his eyes dropping low to the ground.

"Is that so?" Yankumi replied. "Well, hello there." She extended her hand as if to shake his, and unable to see anything else to do Shin reached out his own hand.

Before he could even touch her Yankumi's other hand, fisted and sinewy, came flying out of nowhere and struck Shin square in the jaw.

"OW! Fuck!" Shin yelled as the punch connected and he felt his head start pounding hard. "What's that for?"

"You know damn well what it's for," she stated, and before he could continue Shin felt another fist hard against his ribcage, throwing him backwards.

"It was my only option!" he snapped as he tumbled onto his back and realized she'd probably broken one of his ribs.

"Only option?" she screeched, springing off her back foot and aiming a flying kick for the side of Shin's head, striking him on the cheek and sending him spinning over sideways and grinding his face into the gravelled path.

"Yes!" he shouted, spitting onto the ground and seeing blood. He started to push himself up but felt her foot connect with his ribs from the side and another powerful kick sent him full-flip onto his back. "Just _listen _to me for a-" he began to say, but gave up when it was obvious the only response he was going to get was the fist currently flying towards his face.

Fight or flight kicked in, and there was sure as hell nowhere to run.

He grabbed her wrist before the punch connected and used all the force in his body to swing her to the side, toppling her balance and almost tripping her. It wasn't much, but it gave him the time he needed to roll away from her and onto his feet.

"I was with classmates!" he said fiercely, trying to defend his actions as well as his body, because Yankumi only listened while maintaining a steady stream of punches that Shin had to deflect away from his vital organs. "They would've been killed!"

"So you thought that gave you the right to throw around the Kuroda name?" she accused, launching a high kick for Shin's chest. He raised one of his knee's to block it, then in the second of opportunity that followed he blasted out an arm and hit Yankumi across the face.

She reeled backwards, apparently shocked that Shin had actually hit her.

"Would you LISTEN to me?" he gasped, his breath ragged in his throat and blood running from the corner of his mouth. For a while it looked as if Yankumi was going to go back on the offensive twice as strong, but she appeared to have a change of heart and gradually relaxed her body.

"Go on, I'm listening," she said coldly, and although her arms were lax her hands were still knotted up into fists.

"I was out with people from Toudai," Shin explained, taking deep, desperate breaths between sentences. "Someone had borrowed money to cover their tuition payments, and we all got cornered by their thugs." Another rattling breath. "They said that my friend was late on his interest, and that they wanted all of the money back now. We all knew he didn't have it," Shin pleaded, "and those guys were _dangerous_. They had knives and guns, no one I was with would've lasted a _second_ if things kicked off. It was all I could think of." He winced for the slap that he knew was coming, striking him flat across the cheek with all the sensation of a belt sander.

"You threw around the family name as if it were yours, Shin," she said furiously. "It is not."

"I know," he answered bitterly. "But I couldn't think of anything else."

"That's not an excuse!" she barked. "Now that group think that Kuroda have a problem with them, and that's going to come around to Kyou and Grandpa before you've even got time to tell them you're sorry."

"I know," Shin said in defeat. "I just hoped it wouldn't go any further."

"Well you were wrong," she announced, crushing him with her willpower. "Now you have brought trouble on them, and shamed your own reputation as well. Throwing around big names instead of fighting things out honestly – like a man," she sneered, which was all too much for Shin to bear.

"Fight it out?" he burst. "Like a man? _Really_, Yamaguichi?" he said through squeaky gritted teeth. "Do you ever listen to yourself sometimes? _Fuck_, my reputation!" he snapped, lashing out an arm and grabbing a fistful of her t-shirt, yanking her closer to him in fury. "I'd rather not watch innocent people getting cut down in front of me."

"Your classmates were the ones who had dealings with the Yakuza in the first place," she pointed out, not yet rising to the physical threat Shin was making.

"They were going to _kill _him," he retorted. "I'll survive using a dirty trick on my reputation, _Kuroda _will survive a spot of trouble with another group, I'll just about survive _this _beating," he explained hurriedly, rushing so fast over his words that they barely made any sense, "but my buddy would _not _survive a knife inside his chest. I had to make a choice," he appealed to her one last time, "and I made it this way. So go ahead." He released his grip on her, and spread out his hands in invitation. "Do whatever you think is right."

She immediately raised a fist, holding it back so tensely that it quivered, as if it were lashed to a great elastic slingshot that would easily shatter Shin's nose if she let it go off on him. He didn't move to block it, he didn't even flinch. He just stared back and challenged her.

She held it for almost half a minute, and then suddenly cursed and turned her back, throwing her arm downward and storming back into the house.

"Don't let me see you around here again!" she hollered over her shoulder before she slammed the door, actually _more _furious than before Shin had arrived.

Shin didn't answer, just wiped his mouth on his sleeve and started walking out in the other direction, back onto the street where he'd come from. "I don't make promises I can't keep, Yamaguichi," he mumbled as he shoved his hands into his pockets and ignored the suspicious glances that came at him from all sides.

* * *

Later that day, as Shin nursed a number of very painful bruises (but thankfully no broken bones), one of his classmates who had been with the group the other night approached him.

"Hey Sawada," he said tentatively, noticing Shin's preliminary glare at anyone who chanced their luck enough to _talk _to him in that state. "What... what happened to you? Was it those..."

"No," Shin cut him off. "Relax, those guys won't be hassling any of us again."

"Oh," the fellow law student said meekly. Sometimes when Shin wasn't there, they tried to work out between them not _how_ such a rough-looking kid got into their University with such great results, but _why_. Sawada never seemed too motivated by anything, and he had the attitude of a gang leader, not to mention talking like a Yakuza far too often for it not to be suspicious.

"Uh... Sawada," the guy probed shyly, taking Shin's silence as at least not an order to leave him alone. "You're not..._really _a Yakuza, are you?" Shin looked over at him with a swollen and blackening eye.

"Don't be stupid, of course I'm not," he replied seriously. "I walked into a lamppost."

_With your entire body? _His companion thought, but didn't dare ask. "What was all that 'Red Lion' stuff then?" he asked after a moment's recollection of the previous night.

"Oh, I just made all that up," Shin told him. "Yakuza are so stupid. I definitely wouldn't be _here_ if I was one, would I?"

"Of course not," his friend concurred. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry I asked, it was..."

"Don't sweat it," Shin said coolly. "I know I look the part sometimes."

"Well... I mean you came from Shirokin, didn't you? They _all _look like gangsters or criminals there." Shin tried not to bristle at the slight on the school that he was so fond of, because he knew that his friend didn't mean it like _that_. Not to mention he'd rather avoid confrontations with people until his face stopped hurting so much. Damn Yankumi.

"We've got class in ten minutes," his classmate breached the silence that had fallen since his remark about Shirokin, which he could easily see had irritated Sawada but he hadn't said anything about it. "Do you want to walk together?"

"Sure," Shin replied a little more cheerfully, standing up and shouldering his back. "Ow," he hissed as pressure fell onto his bruised ribs. "Fuckin' Yamaguichi..." he muttered to himself, but not quietly enough.

"Who's Yamaguichi?" he pried, then grew a few sizes smaller as Shin threw a very dominating look his way.

"She's... complicated," he answered at last.

"Ohh," his friend – Hiroki – hummed somewhat knowingly. "I think I follow."

"I bet you don't," Shin replied with a grin pulled thin across his face, twisting up his bloodied lips at the corner and making him wince a moment later.

"Maybe I don't," Hiroki said far too knowingly. "Although I once heard a saying – 'A kiss with a fist is better than none'." He looked over to Shin, who was looking at him out of only one functional eye with an expression that severely questioned his little gem of a saying. "Well, it's a start?" he suggested, and Shin laughed.

"Yeah, some kinda start," he chuckled, but later that night, when he was icing over his injuries before he went to bed, his mind returned to the phrase. Was it suggesting that a violent relationship was better than not having one at all? Or maybe it meant that it was better for someone to feel angry enough to hit you than feel nothing. He guessed that was right, because he'd sure as hell rather Yankumi threw him about and screamed her head off than acted indifferently to him.

* * *

Around the same time, Yankumi sat in her room with her hand pressed against her face where Shin had struck her. She'd been hit by hundreds of people hundreds of times before, but for some reason this incident felt different. It was almost like the few times her Grandpa had hit her, but not quite.

She could hardly believe he'd _done _it at first, but there was the mark upon her cheek, clear as day even if it wasn't very strong.

Hadn't he said not that long ago that he loved her and wanted to be with her always? Wasn't he studying at the country's top university with the intention of becoming a lawyer for the Kuroda family?

He had _hit _her, and he hadn't hesitated or apologised for it.

It occurred to her that she had been hitting him a lot harder at the time, so perhaps it slightly invalidated her standpoint, because she had left him in a much worse state than he'd left her. Externally, at least.

She remembered that she'd told Shin never to come back to her place, and wondered if maybe she'd been too harsh. She was furious about what he'd done, tossing around the Kuroda name and his own meagre associations with them to scare off a couple of thugs, but he'd given her his reasoning, and even if she didn't like it, she could see the reason _why_. It was almost worse that way, because after that she couldn't carry on hitting him.

As she curled up her face began to burn, and not because of where she'd been slapped. She told herself she was overthinking this too much, that they'd just been hotheaded and got into a squabble, and even if _normally _fighting with people didn't rile her like this, she was just going to ignore it and go to sleep. Things would make more sense in the morning.

* * *

And that's it! Please please PLEASE leave a review letting me know what you think about this, because I really have no idea!

Will hopefully update soonish, although that is greatly helped by you lovely people.


	2. I hit you back

A reviewer tagged as Abi suggested to me that in the manga Shin calls actually Yankumi Yamaguichi not Yankumi, and I suddenly realized that I had no idea if he did or not, and in the specials at least it turns out he _does _call her Yamaguichi, so I've had to go back and fiddle with the previous chapter to correct it. Thanks to Abi for picking me up on it, I guess the character of Yankumi was so set in my head that I simply didn't notice Shin called her something else.

* * *

Shin hadn't come around to the Kuroda house in a while, and Yankumi was about to start suspecting that maybe he really _wasn't _coming back, when she came across him in the most awkward of ways.

Passed out in her bathroom.

She _had_ known that Kyou was going for 'a big night out' yesterday, but she hadn't yet grasped that Shin was almost always involved in that plan because he was always made responsible for winning the funds (at a gambling house) for the chaos that would follow afterwards.

Not that she was aware of it, but that night had also coincided with the last day of Shin's midterms at Toudai, and he had decided to have a night with Kyou to celebrate rather than his friends from college, because he reallywanted to go wild and the Young Chief's nights were the best. He had spent _some _of the evening with classmates, but most of them still had exams and none of them wanted to go quite as crazy as Shin desired.

That was how he came to be passed out with his head behind the toilet in Yankumi's bathroom at 10am on a Sunday morning.

"Shin?" she yelped as she pushed open the door, still dressed in her pyjamas and half asleep.

Shin didn't respond so much as moan a little and start to pull himself upright. "My _head_..." he groaned as he looked up at the light that was so offensive to his vision, and then across to the woman that was so harsh to his ears. "Oh," he murmured as he focused on Yankumi slowly. "I'm here."

"Where did you _think _you were?" she squawked, and Shin shrugged. He remained seated on the bathroom floor until Yankumi started to hop around a little, and it occurred to him that he was in the bathroom.

"Oh I'm sorry, do you need to go?" he said, partly sincere and part taunting. Yankumi flushed with embarrassment and then without another word grabbed him by his collar and physically threw him out the door. "_Fine_," she heard him mutter as he crumpled into another pile out in the hallway, not to move until she came back out.

"Aren't you going to get up?" she said stiffly, feeling somewhat misplaced and ill at ease with Shin lying around on her floor like a drunken sorry-for-itself dog.

"The question's not _am_ I, but _can _I," he pointed out, and failed to notice Yankumi's disapproval as he wriggled into a slightly more comfortable position. "Just leave me here," he suggested as he draped an arm over his eyes. "Give me a few more hours and I'll be- URK!" he choked, as Yankumi grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and started to drag him along the floor.

"For heaven's sake," she berated, "at least get yourself to a _bed_."

"...Thanks," was the only response he moaned as she dragged him into her own empty room – the only one that _she _could offer to him – and tossed him onto her futon. "This is _your _bed," he pointed out as she huffed around collecting clothes for the day and anything she would need after her shower.

"Well done," she replied tersely. "People will trip over you if you sleep in the halls, so just count yourself lucky."

"It smells of you," he explained, almost happily, and before she could turn around and question just _what_ he meant by that, he appeared to have gone to sleep again.

"_Brat_," she said grumpily, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her.

It was a good few hours before she saw him again, and the first thing she noticed was the bundle of clothes that were _not _hers by the side of the bed that definitely _was _hers.

"Shin," she said loudly, aiming to wake him up as it was well after noon. "Shin!"

Shin groaned and rolled over, pressing a pillow over his head to try to drown out the daylight and noise that was ruining his nap. She could see quite clearly that he had absolutely nothing on his upper body and prayed to the gods that he had _something _on his lower, because Shin half-naked in her bed was bad enough, but if he was fully naked she'd never sleep at ease in that bed again.

"You lazy bum!" she yelled, angrier than she'd meant to be because her discomfort put a sharp unwelcoming edge onto her tone. "Get out of my bed!"

"You offered it," he mumbled back from underneath her pillow, but after taking in one last deep breath of her, he pushed the thing off his face and sat up. "Fine," he said grumpily. "I'm hungry anyway."

"Hungry? Goddamit I'll give you something to chew on!" she scolded, bounding towards him and trying to cuff him around the chin, but he just leaned a little out of the way and avoided her.

"Why are you always hitting me?" he questioned crossly, the hangover sitting inside his head not making his disposition any sunnier.

"Because the moment I let you out of my sight you turned into a disrespectful wayward child!" she accused, stamping a foot on the floor and reaching out to hold him roughly by his bright red hair.

"I was always like that," he protested, bending into her hold so as not to hurt himself but clearly not happy with the way the afternoon was turning out.

"You _hit _me the last time you were here," she reminded him very coldly, giving him a little shake to emphasise. "You've never done that before."

"You were hitting me!" he retorted. "You can't give it and refuse to take it, Yamaguichi. You beat the shit out of someone and they're entitled to hit you back, regardless of who or what they are."

She frowned, trying to mull over his logic without having to admit that he had a point.

"Speaking of which," he snapped as he reached up and wrapped both hands around Yankumi's wrist, then with a surprisingly quick movement for someone nursing a hangover he kicked up the covers and a foot shot out from underneath, ploughing straight under Yankumi's feet and knocking them clean out from beneath her.

She went flying helplessly in the direction he pulled her, sailing heavily onto the futon next to him with a thud. She let go of his hair, but only so she could try to grab him by the neck in outrage.

"What the hell are you doing?" she yelled as she rolled onto her back and sprung up to grab him by the throat, but no sooner was she moving up than he was moving down, and without paying the slightest bit of notice to the hand wrapped around his neck he threw all of his weight on top of her.

At first she hadn't applied enough pressure on his throat to choke him, just to immobilise, but as she found herself pinned Yankumi started clenching her fingers harder, and finally Shin began to cough.

He reached up with one hand and dug his fingers underneath hers, slowly prying them open enough to stop his head reeling any more than it was already. However, her hands were if anything stronger than his, so after struggling a while Shin opted to suddenly jab her in the waist with his other arm, startling her just long enough to apply a burst of force strong enough to wrench her off his neck.

He slammed down his hand on top of hers, pinning the arm down to the futon; one arm still remained free, though, and in no time at all that was rocketing through the air and smacking Shin hard across the face. He winced into it and didn't release the hold he had on her, one arm pinned down and all of her lower body sandwiched firmly beneath his.

However she couldn't be restrained for long and in no time she had caught him across the cheek with a backhander strong enough to throw him off her entirely; he was quick in following, though, and grabbed hold of her before she could get far away, sitting up and throwing an arm firmly around her body to keep her close to him – if she was close she couldn't hit him _quite_ as hard, because she didn't have the space to build up momentum while he tried to pin her again.

She retaliated by jumping up on both legs, lifting both of them a little way off the ground and landing back down smack on top of Shin wrestling-style, driving him into the floor roughly enough to make him snarl with the pain.

And they were like _that _when the door opened and Tetsuo found them.

"Who the... Tetsuo!" Yankumi yelped as she looked over and recognised the man, who had looked in to discover the cause of the noise and now was as red as a beetroot at what he'd found.

"Sorry Ojou!" he blurted. "I didn't mean to interru-"

"Wait! This isn't what it looks like!" she screamed as Tetsuo slammed the door shut again and ran off to tell Minoru what he saw. Looking back to Shin, who was still smashed beneath her and the floor, Yankumi found he was smirking.

"What's so fuckin' funny?" she barked, and stiffened as his arm tightened around her back, pulling her against him in a way that was definitely not aggressive any more.

"Nothin'" he answered smugly, and then yelled as Yankumi punched him square in the jaw.

"You're enjoying this aren't you?" she accused, ripping herself out of his grasp and scrambling away from him.

"Being hit in the face?" he questioned as he sat up and rubbed his chin sourly. "_No_."

"Not that," she retorted. "The... the... you know."

"Rolling around in your bed half dressed?" he phrased it bluntly, and awkwardness and confusion flashed through the wheel of emotions on her face. "_Well_..." he said, and the look he wore was, if anything, _sexy_, "maybe a bit."

"Uuuhrrg!" Yankumi groaned, picking up one of her sandals and throwing it at him. "You're always trying to embarrass me!"

Shin made an impression of being scandalised, and then his standard crafty grin returned and he started to crawl about for his clothes again.

"You let yourself get into that situation," he reminded her as he dressed himself again, feeling far better after his nap and a bit of healthy violence-induced adrenaline to clear his system. "You know how I feel about you."

"I..." Yankumi spluttered, suddenly _much _more uncomfortable at just the two of them being here. "You're just trying to get to me!" she pronounced suddenly, and Shin rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to let you confuse me saying things like that," she told him sternly. "I know you're just making _fun _of me."

Shin scoffed to himself and rested his head in one of his hands. "Really, Yamaguichi?" he said. "You actually think that?"

"What else would you be trying to do?" she replied haughtily.

"Fine," Shin sighed. "I'll let you work it out for yourself."

"You'll... you..." she murmured, and then let her temper take over as her capacity to converse normally with Shin wore thin. "Just get out of my room!" she snapped.

"Okay," he relented. "Well thanks for letting me sleep here anyway."

"And don't bother me again!" she added. "You only ever seem to come around me to cause trouble these days."

"I don't seem to remember _ever_ throwing the first punch," he retorted cheekily, leaping out of the way as she hurtled her other sandal at him.

"OUT!"

* * *

"Um... hello?" Yankumi said quietly into her phone as she faintly heard Shin saying goodbye to her Grandpa in the next room, he'd had a shower and left the last known address of Kyou before he thanked Ryuichiro for his and his family's hospitality putting him up overnight – not that anyone had known it until the morning.

"Kumiko?" Fujiyama yawned into her mobile. "Is that you?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" Fujiyama questioned brightly.

"I don't want to be overheard," Yankumi replied quietly, cupping her hand around her mouth to further silence her voice.

"Um... not to intrude, but this is your mobile number right?"

"Yes."

"Well can't you just go further away from whoever might overhear you?" Fujiyama pointed out, and then giggled into her end of the line as she heard the clumsy sounds of Yankumi jumping up and running to the end of the garden to speak to her.

"Good thinking," Yankumi commended, panting a little into the mouthpiece.

"Oh you know me," Fujuyama scoffted. "_So _what do you want to talk about?" She paused for a moment, and as Yankumi did not immeaditely answer she began to guess. "Is it about Sawada?" she probed, and then laughed again at the yelping sound that rattled down the phone line from Yankumi.

"How did you?" she spluttered.

"The _only _thing that makes you helpless enough to call me early on a weekend morning is matters of the heart, Kumiko," Fujiyama tutted. "And your lawyer is long gone now, no?"

"Um..." Yankumi mumbled awkwardly.

"Not to mention I _am _love's busty saviour," she added proudly.

"Is anyone calling you that yet?" Yankumi replied, but snapped back to the purpose of her call before she got too distracted. "Never mind. Look, what I wanted to ask you about was..."

"Sawada, right? Ohh! Is he the one you didn't want overhearing? OOH!" she squealed. "_Kumiko! _Did he spend the night with you?"

"No!" Yankumi squeaked. "I mean, _yes_, he slept here... but not with me!" she rushed. "I found him in the morning."

"Slow down, Kumiko," Fujiyama urged.

"Shin... Sawada went out last night with Kyou, who lives here too, you see," she explained. "He ended up back here by chance, and _I _found him passed out on the bathroom floor." There was a little more to the story, but Yankumi decided that it'd be better if Fujiyama didn't know, or she might start making accusations again.

"I follow," she hummed. "So what's the problem?"

"Problem? I... oh, well..." Yankumi said paitently. "He... he said to me, 'you know how I feel about you', and I thought he was just teasing me again but..."

"_Teasing _you?" Fujiyama echoed disdainfully. "Surely you don't think that?"

"That's what he said! What do you mean? What _else _am I supposed to think?" she said in confusion. "_I love you_, _I want to be with you always, you know how I feel..._He's just making fun of me!"

"Kumiko..." Fujiyama said disbelievingly. "Sawada has been lovestruck by you for _years_, why would you even _think_ that he was mocking you?"

"I..." It was a good thing that she had not gone over to see her friend, she thought, because she was as red in the face as one of the tracksuits she favoured in Shirokin right now. "But... it makes no sense," she said at last. "_Why?"_

"Why? _Why_ would Sawada want you?" Fujiyama questioned, and then chuckled merrily. "Oh Kumiko, you are a female after all."

"What?" she wailed.

"You can't believe Sawada is actually in L-O-V-E with you of all people, so you think he must be making fun of you," Fujiyama sort of explained, but mostly teased. "Oh these troubles of the heart."

"Now you're doing it too!" Yankumi said despairingly.

"I can't tell you what to do in this situation," Fujiyama sighed. "It's a matter between your heart and Sawada's," slowly her tone began to drift into a romantic, epic-storytelling lilt that built up in passion as she went on. "You two must reach deep inside yourselves and pull out what you most desire, and then..." she began to speak at length, but Yankumi had dropped the phone from her ear and ceased to listen.

"I've got to work it out for myself?" she said out loud, tucked away at the back of the Kuroda compound where no one could hear her. She put the phone back to her ear again.

"And then you get _him _to hide the key to the handcuffs in his-" Fujiyama was saying, evidently in a world of her own until Yankumi cut her off.

"Thanks for your help, Fujiyama," she said gratefully. "I realize that I've just got to... wait _handcuffs_?"

"Oh hoh hoh!" Fujiyama chuckled. "You know what they say, Kumiko. 'pleasure is right next door to pain'."

"I don't think they do," Yankumi said worriedly. "But thank you, you've been a great help."

"It's my pleasure, Kumiko," Fujiyama said. "I'll see you on monday. Buh-bye!"

Yankumi hung up, and it was only as she was walking back indoors, reflecting somewhat sceptically on what Fujiyama said about pleasure being related to pain, when it occurred to her that maybe _that_ was what Shin was walking about when he said he enjoyed 'rolling around' with her, not the more boorish assumptions she'd made herself.

She felt herself blushing almost instantaneously, just from thinking that maybe Shin had got some kind of... _pleasure _out of fighting with her.

She retreated to her room to mark maths papers and plan lessons, but found being in the scene of the crime so distracting that she had to move to another room before she could get _anything_ done.

* * *

Aaaand that's #2 up! Thanks again to Abi for picking me up on the Yankumi/Yamaguichi thing, although as you can see I still call her Yankumi out of dialouge.

Let me know what you think, I'm really not sure where I'm going with this lol.


	3. You gave a kick

This is set right after the famed 2009 Special of the Gokusen manga, which, if you have not read, is available from the Bishouen Project (google it) for free download, and is entirely made of awesome so you should go and read it RIGHT NOW!

Sorry for the delay, the bunnies didn't want to play with my inspiration recently.

* * *

It wasn't part of _every _maths teacher's job to wake up at least once a month with no idea where she was or why she wasn't – realistically speaking – _dead_, but after a few years Yankumi had become worryingly used to it.

"Uhh?" she groaned as she rolled over on what she had thought was a bed, but after plummeting straight off the edge and finding her face pressed up against car mats, she realized that she was moving. "Whoah!" she'd yelled as she fell off the back seat of Shin's car so suddenly that he almost drove straight off the road.

"What the hell!" he snapped as he regained control of the car again. "Are you _trying_ to make me crash?"

"What the... where are we going?" she asked as she clambered off the car floor and piled herself into one of the seats. "Is this _your _car?"

"Of course it is," he retorted, and glanced over his shoulder at her for a moment. "Are you concussed or something?"

"Ma–aybe ," she murmured, trying to rest her head on one hand but wincing against her own injuries and deciding against it. "Ooh I really did it this time." She tried to track back over the events of the night and work out exactly where it went so disastrously wrong. She _thought_ she'd gone to save her new students from a biker gang... which was – if her memory served her correctly – more or less what happened in the end, give or take a double cross or two.

She'd been put in a position where she couldn't fight back against the thugs, and then she'd definitely blacked out, because when she woke up she was in Shin's arms and that was _not _where she'd been when she went under.

Albeit a bit fuzzy around the edges, she more or less remembered what he'd said to her when she came to, and what _she'd _said back. She remembered, with a quickly-rising blush, that somehow they'd been about to..._k-i-s-s _when Ucchi jumped so high in the air and screamed so loud that even _they _looked around to see what the fuss was.

_They_ were the fuss, it turned out, but the damage was already done, and he had bundled Yankumi into the back of his car for entirely unromantic reasons before they embarrassed themselves any more.

"I'm taking you home," he told her. "I called ahead already, so the family doctor will be waiting for you."

"Oh," she murmured, sliding down against the door a little and breathing out heavily. The adrenaline that had been sustaining her until now was slowly ebbing away, to be replaced with entirely unwelcome pain.

"You okay?" he asked, quickly turning back again in concern.

"Tired," she replied. "Hurt," she added for good measure.

"You shouldn't have gone in alone," he said in an almost scolding way. "You're lucky I got there when I did."

"Yeah," she agreed, for one because it was true, and also because she was way too exhausted to argue.

"Did you mean it?" she questioned after a while. "What you said?" Shin wasn't stupid, so he didn't need to ask what she was talking about.

"Of course I do," he replied effortlessly. "I wouldn't say it otherwise." Eyes on the road, he didn't even seem bothered by the significance of what he was saying to her; in his heart it was so old he barely even noticed it any more.

"Oh..." she said quietly, sighing again and trying to ram through just one moment of lucidity in her hazy mind to process the revelation. She couldn't exactly deny Shin's feelings any more, as they _had_ almost kissed back there.

"Thank you," she said finally, enough time having passed since the last time she spoke that Shin didn't quite follow her.

"For what?" he replied. "I wasn't just going to leave you out there, was I?"

"No," she countered. "Not that. Thanks for.. um...for _l..._" she hesitated again, trailing off and chewing on the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, I get it," said Shin before she forced herself to continue. "It's fine. Uh, I mean... you're welcome."

They sat in almost-awkward silence until he pulled up just around the corner from the Kuroda compound, where the entirety of the family was standing eagerly outside waving their arms about and shouting both Yankumi and Shin's names into the night air.

"We're here," he announced, turning around after shutting off the engine and climbing without explanation into the back seat with her.

"I can walk," she said weakly as she felt him looping his arms around her body

"You could," he said with a little touch of humour returning to his voice, "but I'm not here to carry you."

"_Oh_," she breathed, then sucked in another breath quickly as his hand ran up from her shoulder to her neck, then guided her face _almost_ into contact with his, so that she could feel his breath on her, but wasn't quite skin on skin.

"Don't you wanna finish what we started?" he proposed, running his hand a little higher until his fingers slipped through her hair. Yankumi's chest heaved a little, rising and falling much _much _faster than normal.

Shin himself almost jumped through the roof of his car when, after putting himself in a position that was _entirely _likely to get him punched in the face – even if he wasn't showing his fear – he felt Yankumi timidly put her hand on his shoulder.

She ran her hand along his collarbone and he shuddered with the contact, closing his eyes and breathing in to steady himself as her hand slipped slower to press over his chest.

She was feeling for his heartbeat. By the time he realized this it was beating so hard he could hear it in his own ears; then, when he couldn't bear another moment, with one soft tug he pulled her mouth against his.

* * *

"I don't understand, he said he was driving right over," Kyou said worriedly, stood out on the street outside the Kuroda house with Tetsu and Minoru on either side.

"Maybe the bikers ran him off the road, boss?" Tetsu splutterd. "Minoru! Lets go find them!"

"Burrrrrrh!" Minoru roared, balling his chubby hands into boulderlike fists and bashing them against his belly.

"Hold it!" Kyou snapped, looking at his watch in concern. "I'm sure youngin' Red Lion is fine, he could handle a coupla punks no problem."

"But what if Ojou had been knocked down and he had to protect her?" Tetsu postulated. "What if he had to dive to take a blow for her, and then one snuck'im round the back?"

"HOLY SHIT!" Kyou hollered. "You're right! Let's _go_!" he bellowed, pulling a gun out of his waistband and flicking off the safety. The three of them started to charge down the street and passed Shin on the way, none of them even looking twice. Shin had to slow down, then reverse to catch up with them, rolling down the window as he went.

"Hey, where are you guys going?" he asked the war procession.

"Gonna ice the punks who got our Ojou and the Young Red... oh." Kyou looked unusually surprised. "You're here."

"Oh_ come on_, we just hit a little traffic," Shin lied without even a flicker of unease. "She's fine. Sound asleep in the back, have a look for yourself."

Tetsuo pressed his face up against the glass of Shin's back seat and stared in, seeing Yankumi curled up inside on the seat with her face buried under her arm. When the door was opened and she heard the reassuring voices of her family, they mistook her embarrassment and confusion for drowsiness, and Shin saw no need to correct them.

"You staying with us, Young Master?" Minoru questioned as Kyou carefully lifted Yankumi and carried her inside, in spite of her protests that she could actually walk just fine.

"Oh, I better not," Shin said with a crafty look in Yankumi's direction. "She needs to rest." '_And won't get any when I'm around_' he added silently. "I'll come by and see tomorrow."

"Sure thing," Minoru said cheerfully. "You know our Ojou, she'll be back on her feet before you know it."

"I bet she will," he answered, revving the engine of his car and then with a nod to Minoru driving away.

* * *

True to his word, Shin was back in the Kuroda house in time for lunch the next day, and was welcomed as a demi-hero for saving Yankumi from the wrong end of a gang beating... _again_.

The one person who _didn't _give him a warm welcome, however, was the only person that he'd wanted one from.

"Where is she, if you don't mind my asking?" Shin questioned Yankumi's grandfather respectfully; they had been sharing a pot of tea only when the younger declined drinking sake so early in the day.

"Still sleeping probably," Ryuichiro answered. "But you can go and check on her by all means. She really ought to eat something. _Tetsuo!"_ he barked suddenly, transforming in a split second from a friendly old man to one of the sleeping demons of the Yakuza world. "Prepare some lunch for Kumiko!"

A few minutes later Tetsuo came trotting out with some food on a tray, which he offered to take to Yankumi's room himself but Shin insisted he could handle it, as he was going anyway. Not to mention he didn't exactly want _company _if things went anything like yesterday did.

He knocked once on her door, and after hearing no answer opened it and stepped inside. There was a large bundle in the centre of Yankumi's futon that he presumed she was buried somewhere in.

"Yama...uh, _you_," he said awkwardly, setting down the tray and sitting beside it. "Hey, wake up," he said a little louder, prodding the bundle softly. "You gotta eat something," he told the still-silent mound. "_Hey_!"

There came a soft mumbling sound from somewhere underneath the covers, and from the opposite end that he'd expected Yankumi's head peeked out from underneath.

"Uhhhh?" she moaned in confusion.

"Yamaguichi, it's just me," he said a little impatiently. "Time for lunch."

"Lunch?" she mumbled, "but I haven't even had breakfast..."

"You slept through that," he explained. "Come on, you got to eat if you're gonna be back at school on Monday." He knew her far too well to think she'd take a day off Shirokin for anything less than full body traction at a hospital.

"Back at..." she quietly echoed some of his words, evidently trying to run over in her head what Shin was talking about and why he was here; he, in the meantime, was holding out a bowl of noodles and vegetables for her to take, staring off around the room vacantly as he waited for the haze of sleep to lift from her.

What he didn't expect was to find the bowl upside down on _his head_, as Yankumi had all of a sudden flicked the thing straight out of his hands and thrown it all over him.

"What the fuck?" he yelled, too shocked and surprised to process anything other than the thought that he was going to have to wash his hair twice to get all the sauce out, when the familiar friend, Yankumi's fist, flew past his ear and almost took his head off with it.

He rolled out of the way of her and scrambled backwards, only for her to fling the empty bowl at him, which he swatted out of the way mid-air and sent smashing into the wall.

"Jesus fucking christ, Yamaguichi!" he yelled. "What is it _this_ time!"

"You! You! _You_...!" she spluttered, her face bright red and eyes screwed up angrily.

"What did I do?" he asked furiously. "This is getting ridiculous!"

"You-!" she began to scream, and then checked herself, and dropped her voice down to a quiet un-eavesdroppable tone. "You took _advantage_ of me," she accused.

"I swear I didn't touch you!" Shin replied, staring at her in horror. "I just woke you up, that's all."

"Not _now_!" she ridiculed, "l-l-last night!" she stuttered more from fury than embarrassment, as far as Shin could observe.

He was silent for a moment after she finished, seemingly stunned by what she said. "I did WHAT?" suddenly he snarled back at her, "that's the stupidest lie I've ever heard," he told her. "You were _perfectly _willing last night."

"I was... I was concussed!" she retorted.

"That's not true," Shin countered. "I talked to your Grandfather myself. The doctor said you were very lucky."

"What does he know!" she snapped. "My judgement was impaired and you... you did..."

"I did what?" he challenged, getting to his feet and running a hand back over his hair to get it out of his face, the concealing sauce making it slick and stick back, which made his fairly serious expression only look more intimidating. "_This?_"

Before she knew what was happening he'd quite literally pounced, landing so close to Yankumi she had to roll back or be hit by him, and no sooner was she down than he had her pinned by her shoulders.

Without needing to think twice she punched him with her one good arm, but as expected he didn't waver at all.

"How familiar is this?" Shin said sarcastically, applying enough pressure to keep the injured Yankumi down but being careful not to outright hurt her.

"Don't mess with me," she said furiously. "Get off, Shin."

"No," he said bluntly. "Not until you admit it."

"What?" she spat.

"That you want me as much as I want you," he answered, and then without hesitation ducked down low over her, as if to kiss her. He stopped at the last moment and hovered, his eyes open and regarding with amusement the closed counterparts and pursed lips of Yankumi. "See?" he said smugly, and then hissed as she slapped him.

"God you're a handful," he berated, feeling a trickle of noodle dressing running down his temple. "Oh hell," he said with a sigh, relaxing his body and sitting back up, wiping his forehead with his hand. "You know what, I'm gonna go clean up," he told her. "I'll give you some time to think this over."

"I don't..." she said half-heartedly, wanting to be angry but really too confused to pull it off.

"Just let me give you _one_ thing to consider," Shin proposed compromisingly, and Yankumi's only mildly suspicious look in response indicated she was listening.

He leaned forwards and kissed her, this time totally without warning, and so quickly that by the time she realized what it was – it was already over.

"You!" she spluttered, but Shin was already on his feet and by the door; so all she had was the taste of him (or more specifically, of _her _lunch) left on her lips.

* * *

I had more that I could've written after this, but I just liked this last line too much not to end it here.

Make like a tree... and LEAVE a review! Doh hoh hoh!


	4. I gave a slap

Shin had hoped that by the time he'd washed all of the sauce Yankumi threw over him out of his hair, she might have calmed down a little. If he was honest with himself he was skeptical at best - thinking Yankumi might calm down in ten minutes was like expecting a litter of puppies to calm down.

When he left her she'd been somewhere between capriciousness and denial concerning what _she _thought they were to each other, but as with all things Yankumi these emotions were expressed as violence.

He would be a liar to say he hadn't considered climbing out of the bathroom window at one point, but eventually decided against it not so much because he felt he should face her honestly, but because the dog Fuji had taken to crapping outside all the escape routes from the house since Kudou arrived there.

When he emerged from the bathroom, still toweling his face and hair dry, he discovered the object of his entirely irrational affections standing right outside the door.

"It's all yours," he told her calmly, in spite of the fact that her expression heavily suggested she had business with _him _and not the bathroom. When she didn't respond he took her silence as answer enough. "Well, what is it?" he asked reluctantly.

He flinched unconsciously when he saw Yankumi's hands moving into fists, but in a nice change from hitting him she simply struck a heroic pose.

"I have come to accept and realize that the reality of the facts is that I do in fact actually feel what they call feelings towards you, Shin," she announced in such complex double talk that Shin doubted _she _had any idea what she was saying. "..._Probably_," she hastily added, much to his disappointment.

"Well... that's..." he began, but didn't get very far at all before her monologue continued.

"BUT!" she burst. "I made a solemn promise to myself and my family that any man who wished to date me must do _one _thing..."

"Oh no," Shin murmured. "Please don't say-"

"...They must beat me in a fight."

"_That_," he finished despondently. "Look, Yamaguichi... _Kumiko_," he pleaded. "Haven't we fought enough already? I've not slept right for weeks thanks to all the injuries I have from you."

"Rules are rules, Shin," she said proudly, absolutely thrilled to have found a solution to her emotional dilemma that just involved having a fight - which was in all realistic terms her ideal solution to most divisive issues. "You should respect my wishes."

He observed her for a while, and reminded himself exactly who he was dealing with.

"You're set on this," he stated rather than asked, and wasn't surprised to see her nodding sternly in response. "Fine, then I'll do as you ask. So what happens if I win?"

"BAH!" she scoffed. "As if!"

Shin tried to look hurt, but he knew just as well as she did how unlikely his beating her in a fight was. Even if he could just about match her in strength, there were still leagues between them in terms of style and practice.

"Well if I lose?" he suggested more realistically.

"Then you have to give up and stop pursuing me," she told him firmly, causing Shin to wonder just what went on in her head sometimes - no matter how she presented herself now, he had never drawn her into doing anything against her will. She had been _completely _willing last night when she'd acknowledged his feelings for her, and doubly so when they kissed; she just didn't seem to realize that _now_.

"So if I win," he asserted, "then you have to stop resisting?"

"Well... theoretically yes," she admitted uncomfortably. "But that's never going to happen!" She moved to cross her arms defiantly and forgot once again that one was in a sling. "Yow!" she screamed as she twisted the injured limb.

"Well at least say we'll wait until you're better," he pushed for any delay he could - not to mention he didn't exactly want to make an injured person any worse, especially not when he cared about her like he did for Yankumi.

"Sounds fair," she decided, and held out her uninjured arm to shake upon the arrangement.

"It's not like I have any choice," he said as he shook her hand with a sigh.

"What do you mean? You could always just walk away," she said naively. "I'm not _forcing _you."

"Oh don't be stupid, Yamaguichi" he replied automatically.

"What? I'm not being stupid you rude brat!" she blustered. "_Why _is it such a ridiculous suggestion?"

He looked at her as if he were trying to work out how someone born yesterday could age 26 years in a single day.

"Because I love you," he said at last, so condescendingly that it sounded like he was actually disappointed he had to say it to her out loud. "Even if it's the biggest longshot or smallest chance, I have to take it," he explained sourly. "I can't love you and walk away from _any _chance to be together, even if it's a suicide mission," he continued. "I'm kinda surprised you even had to ask."

"..._Oh_," she mumbled so quietly that Shin didn't even hear. "Well... you see... um," she babbled. "Good luck!" she said at last, her face flushing redder by the second.

"Instead of wishing me luck, you could just let me off," he pointed out. "Or let me win, I guess," he added caustically.

"I would NEVER throw a fight!" she burst.

"It was worth a try." Shin shrugged, and then slid his hands into his pockets. "I better go then, now that's... 'sorted'," he said sarcastically. "I've got early lectures and you need your rest."

"Uh, well, good, okay then..." she jabbered. "I'll tell the family formally at-"

"Oh god, spare me the formalities at least," he begged irately. "You owe me that much at least."

"Fine!" she snapped. "You're never out from under my feet for long anyway."

"I do so love it down there," he retorted dryly.

"Don't make this fight happen any sooner than it has to," she threatened grumpily; this was not one of those times when Shin's twisted sense of humor amused her.

"I'm ready when you are," he replied coolly, and yanked one of his hands out of his jeans to wave goodbye - he had considered a surprise kiss again, like before, but Yankumi wasn't the kind of woman to fall for the same trick twice within an hour, and he really didn't feel like forfeiting his ability to fight her permanently by trying it.

* * *

Yankumi being the resilient creature that she was, she was on top fighting form within the week, which Shin had spent the entirety of trying to work out how to fight dirty against someone who'd shown you how to do it in the first place. You didn't _get _dirtier than a Yakuza, and Yankumi while not officially one herself was still the toughest of the tough.

In spite of telling her to skip the formalities she had evidently been planning, somehow Yankumi didn't feel that sending Tetsuo to Shin's door dressed in fundoishi and carrying a written challenge was at all included in that catagory. It was all he could do to convince the man _he _wasn't going to be wearing one hilmself, but unfortunately he did have to relinquish walking all the way over to the Kuroda house with Tetsuo next to him, which was bad enough.

Foolishly, he'd thought that would be the end of it, but when he _did _arrive Yankumi was dressed up in her best kimono with a pair of shades on, looking very much the part for a Yakuza movie.

"_Seriously_, Yamaguichi?" he asked begrudgingly. "Exactly what part of 'spare me the formalities' meant 'go all out on formalities' to you?"

"Silence!" she bellowed in her best Yakuza voice at him, but Shin just crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at her.

"It's gonna be a damn lot harder for you to fight me in that thing," he pointed out scathingly, but not sooner had he said it than she ripped the entire kimono from her body with an over the top flourish, revealing simple shorts and a vest top underneath. Shin _wanted _to ask her if that had been at all necessary, but his mouth was hanging open and words failed him - he was certain he'd fantasised something very similar to this happening many times before, but to actually see it in reality struck him into such a daze that it took some calling of his name before he snapped back to reality.

"Uh... right," he muttered after a little coaxing from his audience for the event; namely, Kyou, Tetsuo and Minerou. Wakamatsu probably had _useful _things to do with his life. "Let's do this, then," he said at last, and slowly applied his weight onto his back foot as he braced himself.

"Bring it!" he barked, and the sounds weren't dead on his tongue before she came flying at him all guns blazing.

It was all he could do to take the first punch on the side of his face and not smack bang in the middle (shattering his nose), but by the time the second blow came at him he had put his arms up as a guard; taking the blow with both hands, he dropped his right and then threw an unmotivated punch at her.

Obviously, he missed.

It didn't help that the last thing he wanted to do to Yankumi was hit her, especially as he wasn't even pissed off. He'd actually been in a pretty good mood earlier in the day. That said, his irritation increased gradually with each totally unrestrained and absolutely painful hit she landed on him. He was only human, and eventually his frustration boiled up so much that without any control over it his temper suddenly snapped and out of nowhere he slammed her right in the face with the kind of punch he ususally reserved for _protecting _her.

He'd hit her so hard that she was knocked back a full step and grabbed her face in shock; even their onlookers made an empathetic 'Ooh!' sound as his fist connected.

"Oh shit!" Shin rushed guiltily. "I'm sor.. I didn't mean to-" he tried to apologise, then cut off as Yankumi calmly recovered herself and hi-kicked him right under the chin in return.

"That fuckin' hurt!" she snapped, coming at him fast and hard with a mixture of fists and elbows, pushing him back across the garden towards the house.

"HURT?" Shin roared. "What do you think you've been doing to _me _all this time?"

"It's different," she professed as she kicked his legs out from undernath him and tripped him down to the ground. "I'm only doing this to set you on the right track."

"What do _you _know about it?" he fired back. "How can you know how I feel and tell me honestly I should forget about you?" He caught one of her fists mid-flight, still lying on his back, and crushed it hard in his own hand. "You're just scared," he told her fiercly, "because _you _feel it too."

"That's NOT true!" she hollered, launching a low, swinging kick at him, but he rolled out of the way just in time and pushed up onto his front, then sprung forwards and dashed towards the house. He was hoping to slow her down, because he'd realized a good while ago that there was no way he could win against her with strength or skill - he knew before they even started that he would have to somehow change her mind.

The only problem was that Yankumi was about as likely to change her mind about something as Fujiyama was to suddenly join a convent.

"What isn't true?" he questioned. "That you're scared, or that you feel it as well?" He scrambled inside the house past a screen door and closed it behind him tightly.

"BOTH!" bellowed Yankumi as she punched straight trhough the door and hit Shin directly in the chest. When she pulled out her hand and threw the door open he was already half way down the corridor, so she grabbed a vase off a nearby shelf and threw it at him, catching him in the back with such force that it smashed on him and he went tumbling forwards to the floor again.

"Oh _hell," _Shin groaned as he hit the floor, and in the time it took him to roll onto his back than Yankumi was bearing down on him ready for attack again. "You're.. a liar," he wheezed through his winded chest. Her response was to ready a devastating downward punch.

He swung his head away at the last moment, and moved a hand to catch her by the wrist as she punched the floor instead. At the same time he wound up a leg and then sprung a hard sideways kick under Yankumi's legs, so that she came crashing down on top of him. Before she had even untensed after the impact of the fall, he'd clapped his free hand behind her had and then smashed her mouth against his.

He was not gentle, and he was _not _romantic, and she was fairly certain that she felt his tongue right at the very back of her mouth before she could recover from the shock and push it back with her own. Even if she didn't fancy admitting to herself that she was kissing him back, Shin obviously felt she was because he just tighetned his grip on her and melded the first kiss into a similarly messy second, only drawing back slightly to trap her lower lip between his teeth and bite it.

When it at last occured to her that she could tear herself away from the kiss with something other than her mouth, Yankumi did - as soon as she was sure she could back off without leaving part of herself still in Shin's mouth. As soon as she had the space to, she slapped him hard across the cheek.

What she hadn't expected was for Shin to smack her back just as hard without a moment's hesitation, and then drag her straight back into another destructive kiss. She attempted to retaliate this time by biting him just as he'd bitten her, but all that did was make him groan encouragement and dig his fingers so hard into her shoulder that each finger left a mark on her skin.

Now while she _may _have been slightly innocent of sexual matters for her age, Yankumi wasn't stupid, and registered exactly what kind of reaction she was getting from Shin by being rough, and all things said and done she really wasn't that pleased with it.

She retreated and leapt to her feet as fast as she could force herself out of his grasp, and was legging it back outside before Shin could calm himself down, check if he was bleeding from his mouth or not, and get up to follow her.

"You know I don't want to fight," he said calmly as he stepped outside, only to be greeted with a furious haymaker at the hands of an even more furious Yamaguichi Kumiko.

"I know what _you _want to do!" she screeched, grabbing him by the shoulders of his t-shirt and smashing him back agaisnt the house wall.

"Why don't you at least try it?" he proposed. "Who knows, you might even _enjoy _it."

Too scandalised for words, Yankumi just smacked Shin across the face again and then backhanded him on the return.

Rolling his eyes and heaving a great sigh, Shin changed his tack again and suddenly started throwing out wild punches almost as fast as Yankumi could block them.

"Even if I have to do it til I'm old or dead," he said angrily, his voice ragged and uneven with exhaustion and emotion. "I'll keep on fighting," he said. "I'd rather be here getting a beating than with anyone else." He carried on trying to keep up with her, but he was flagging fast, and knew he wasn't going to last all that much longer. "You think I don't have other options?" he growled. "I could be with a dozen different people if I just said the word." Even though they were the words of a boast, he sounded so disgusted with the very idea that it didn't really sound all that arrogant.

"But I don't want them, I want _YOU!" _he finally blurted, the words escaping him like steam from pressure cooker. Then, as if he really had run out of power, he dropped his fists and shoulders in defeat. Panting in the cool air of the garden, while the afternoon sun flashed off the windows of the house behind him. Yankumi saw at her own reflection in them over his shoulder, and noticed the crazed state she was in more clearly than she expected.

"If it's you," Shin said quietly, "even being hit is better than nothing." _A kiss with a fist is better than none_. Only at that moment did he fully understand the meaning of his friend's proverb, and he doubted he would ever understand it quite so well again. He stared at Yankumi, and even though what he saw was a short-tempered, crazy, weird and over-eager tacher who had far more bad ideas than she had good ones, he still loved her.

A whole week of terror and pain with her was still bettere than a single dull and empty day without her, and he couldn't hide it any more than he could deny it. He'd meant every word he'd said to her when he finally confessed; he loved her and wanted to be with her _always. _Even at this price. Hell, _because _of that price.

Yankumi looked more shocked by the outburst than by any punch he could have thrown at her, and for a moment the two just stood and stared at each other in silence. Then, with a shrill 'Hi-yah!' she leapt up and kicked him in the chest, sending him spinning backwards and straight through the window.

The sound of glass shattering brought Shin back to his senses more than the feeling of it tearing into his shoulder, because with all the adrenaline in his system it didn't feel any worse than any other hit Yankumi had thrown at him that day.

"_Fuuuck," _he hissed when the pain finally throbbed through; he took a deep breath and grabbed his arm by the elbow, then suddenly wrenched his arm out of the window. He felt his own blood rushing over his hand as his shoulder was ripped open, but the shock had been so much that it didn't really feel like _his _pain.

He looked down at the wounded shoulder, and saw there was a shard of glass still sticking out of the top of his body still. Without really thinking about it, he picked it out with his other hand, which was already covered in blood, and then dropped the bloody edge on the ground, where it smashed on the stone paving into several smaller pieces.

Shin looked up at Yankumi, who was watching him with an expression of complete and unrestrained horror, and as the blood stain slowly spread across his clothes, all of the colour drained out of _her _face, until she suddenly fainted dead, crumpling down onto the ground without Shin so much as touching her.

He plastered his slippery hand over the worst of his bleeding and then looked over to Kyou, Tetsuo and Minerou, who were still watching, and looked even more shocked than Yankumi had.

"...MASTER RED LION HAS WON!" Kyou suddenly roared, and moments later Tetsuo and Minoru burst out in cheering and clapping.

Shin wasn't sure as to whether he should laugh or cry or pass out, but settled for standing exactly where he was shaking uncontrollably until Kyou gently took him by the uninjured shoulder and guided him inside.

"The doc's on his way, brother," he told Shin proudly. "Don't you worry, jus' relax now."

"I don't think I _can_," Shin replied breathlessly, still gripping his other shoulder tightly and shaking.

"It's all over now, you won," Kyou beamed - he'd made very little secret of his aspirations for Shin to win. Who_ wouldn't_ want such a lucky brother-in-law?

"It was hardly fair," he pointed out, and Kyou laughed so hard Shin felt his blood pulse in time

"We're Yakuza, kid, 'fair' ain't a word we use all that often," he chuckled. "But Ojou got KO'd and you're still standing on your own two feet, so as far as any of us can see that's a clear win for ya."

"Don't think _she'll _be all that happy about it," Shin said sourly. "When she wakes up, I mean."

"We all saw ya win," Kyou assured him. "When she comes to she's just gonna have ta' deal with it."

Somehow, even though he had a shoulder full of glass and was bleeding all over the Kuroda family's floor, Shin felt that the worst was still to come.

* * *

Well... I THOUGHT this was going to be the last chapter, it's certainly a helluva lot longer than the previous ones, but it's NOT. The difference between this and the others being that stranded for a long weekend without a laptop, I've taken to writing longhand and typing up the progress. This was entirely transposed from an A5 pad, which is a bit old skool for me, but it _did _work.

Leave a review if it pleases you, and I'll try to get to work on the next installation (maybe THAT will be the last chapter) soon.

Loveandkisses from fearandloathing!


	5. You smashed a plate over my head

New chapter rar rar! This is another longhand written chapter, although more original material came up in the transcription this time.

Anyway, in answer to an anon review about the chapter titles, they are all actually lyrics from the song this story gets its title from 'Kiss with a Fist' by Florence and The Machine. The song opens, _You hit me once, I hit you back, You gave a kick, I gave a slap, you smashed a plate over my head, then I set fire to our bed._

So if I can manage it, there will be an even 6 chapters each with a single line in. Making this one 'You smashed a plate (over my head)' and the next and last one, 'Then I set fire to our bed'._  
_

* * *

The first time Yankumi woke up after passing out, she had been moved inside to be checked by the doctor after Sawada was dealt with, so the first thing she saw upon opening her eyes was Shin having his arm sewn back together, and she consequently passed out again a few moments later. The next time she awoke, in her own room after being moved a second time once the doctor okayed her, so she didn't actually realize that the first time had been real at all (and not a dream) until she wandered out of her room and discovered Shin dozing on a sofa in their living room; his arm was completely bound to his chest to keep him from moving it, and his entire shoulder covered in bandages.

Before she had any time to make a sound, her Grandpa suddenly stood up from a chair across the room and shushed her, albeit while rustling his own paper as he put it down.

"Manners, Kumiko," he chided. "The least you can do for him is to let him rest."

"The _least _I could...?" she repeated in confusion, trying to go over the events of the day in her slightly groggy head. The state of Shin filled in the gaps that her memory had omitted, and when she at last grasped the entirety of the situation, she paled and became rather sheepish. "Um... is he all right?"she asked meekly.

"Sawada will be fine," Ryuichiro assured her. "He just needs to rest." Although it sounded like an end, there was a weighted pause that followed which told Yankumi all was not yet said, and she was right. "That means no more fighting," he added sternly.

"Hey! What does _that _mean?" she burst indignantly, bristling at the accusation.

"You have done nothing but fight with Sawada for _months _now," Ryuichiro informed her, crossing his arms and remaining unimpressed at his granddaughter's poor show of being wrongly put upon. "I don't think I have once seen him leave here without having got into a scuffle with you."

"That's! _That's!..._Thaaat's... what about..." she tried to argue, but when he put it like that she couldn't think of a contrary occasion to argue with.

"Exactly. _So_," he cut in, only needing to slightly alter the tone of his voice to speak with unquestionable authority. "You will just have to restrain yourself until Sawada has healed."

"It's not _like that_, Grandpa!" she protested, but all Ryuichiro did was shake his head and click his tongue at her.

"You haven't changed since you were a little girl," he remarked with personal amusement. "You would always beat up the boys you liked _then_, too."

"Grandpa!" she shrieked. "I don't _like _him!" Only recently having regained a healthy colour in her face, now it went too far as Yankumi started to blush uncomfortably. "Look, Shin is... Sawada is just my old student,"she lied rather ineffectively, as even _she _admitted to herself that they were (or used to be, at least) friends. "And... and if he's fine, can we not just send him home in a car already?" she said sourly, eager to get Shin, and all the trouble associated with him, as far away from her and her meddling family as possible.

However, all of a sudden Ruichiro's expression turned from mildly parental, but not cross, to a very clear and forceful anger.

"Kumiko, you will _not _behave so disrespectfully in my home," he stated coldly; he didn't yell, but Yankumi knew better than anyone that he didn't need to. "_You _injured Sawada - this time as every other since he graduated - and now it is much more than a case of some scrapes and bruises. He has been seriously injured at _your _hands, and all because he was fighting to prove his feelings to _you _in the first place."

How he knew what their fight had been about was beyond Yankumi's knowledge, as she had tried her hardest to keep the entire fiasco away from him as much as possible.

"Now you _dare _to speak of turning him out and scorning him?" he continued without so much as a second's opportunity for his granddaughter to interrupted. "Well I raised you _better _than this!" he snapped, and while she was flinching Yankumi tried to think of a time that she had seen him this cross over anything.

"Covering the medical costs of his recover is no more than the _beginning _of the Kuroda's apology to him," Ryuichiro explained. "He has been nothing but a loyal friend and protector of this family, and it is unforgivable that he should have been so treated within our walls. As _you _did the damage, I fully expect _you _to personally show him the respect he is due in forgiveness."

"But..." she attempted to butt in.

"But nothing, Kumiko!" he snapped. "You _will _give Sawada his due, or so help me I will have a car take _you _to the other side of town!"

Not even Kumiko's parents had the ability to tell her off like Ryuichiro could, and even in her twenties he had the ability of making her feel like bursting into tears like a seven year old all over again. Time and again she was reminded that to him she would _always _be a little girl.

"I'm sorry, grandpa," she mumbled sadly, keeping her eyes low out of shame and twisting her fingers together.

"_I _am not who you should be apologising to," he replied calmly, the anger gone from his voice as quickly as it had appeared. "Now I trust that after our little discussion, you will make things right with Sawada," he stated, picking up his paper again and folding it under his arm. "I am going to go read outside in the sun awhile." He strode out of the room without another word, leaving Yankumi somewhat beached in the doorway.

There was silence for a few moments, but then it unexpectedly broke and surprised her.

"Wow, he sure laid into you, didn't he?"

"SHIN?" she yelped. "How long have you been awake?" she added a little crossly.

"Long enough," he answered, reaching up with his unbound arm and feeling his shoulder under the bandages tentatively, wincing as he became reacquainted with the pain. "You were both kinda yelling," he pointed out.

"Oh... um, I'm sorry," she mumbled.

"It's fine, I was only dozing," he replied.

"Not about that," she retorted. "Wait, yes about that _too_, but I meant I'm sorry about your arm," she explained awkwardly. "I never meant for you to hit the window..."

"Don't worry about it," he said carelessly. "After all, if you didn't do that I'd never have won our..."

"YOU won?" she snapped. "What the hell are you talking about?" Shin had never seen someone go from looking happily relieved to indignant and cross so quickly.

"Don't tell me you didn't notice that big black spot in your memory," he said scathingly. "You know you passed out, right? I mean, sure I had my ass kicked and an arm full of glass, but I was still _conscious_," he pointed out, and before she could argue - which he could see she was of a mind to - he quickly continued, "You can ask Kyou, he saw the whole thing. So did Tetsuo and Minoru."

Yankumi fell quiet as she took in this new point, and it was some time before she spoke again. "I want a rematch!" she burst suddenly, not expecting Shin to laugh like he did.

"Oh, so you admit I won?" he said cheerfully.

"_No_, I just call an unsatisfactory outcome," she professed eloquently.

"You _would_," he reminded her. "You lost."

"I did NOT!" she bellowed. "I suffered from a... a..."

"You stone cold fainted at the sight of what you did to my arm," he told her. "Sure," he admitted, "there was _a lot_ of blood, but it's not like I've ever seen you go woozy over it before."

"I don't," she said proudly, having always thought herself tough on that point.

"Well you _did," _he reminded her. "Maybe it was because it was me," he said hopefully. "That's got to count for something, hasn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied defensively, shifting her weight from foot to foot and refusing to look him in the eyes.

"Why can't you just accept it?" he said wearily. "Come on, Yamaguichi. The fight, me, you... everything."

"I... I _can't_," she murmured. "I _really _can't..."

"Why not?" he retorted. "It's not as if I'm still your student, it's not like there's anything really stopping us."

"But you _were_!" she burst. "I mean, I never even thought about a student like _that _before..."

"You certainly seemed to that time in my car," he pointed out smoothly.

"That was a temporary lapse in judgment caused by my injuries and confusion!" she yelled, and instead of reacting badly, as she'd expected, he just laughed a little contemptuously.

"Got your story straight at last, eh?" he taunted, and then reached out with his free arm a little way and made a coaxing gesture. " So do I get the same 'lapses of judgment' considering I'm injured, too?"

"It's not a lapse of judgment if you do it normally!" she accused, and Shin easily gave up, his arm appearing to require more of his attention, hissing through his teeth as he gently felt through the bandages.

"You know, I think I'm still bleeding a bit under there," he said to no one in particular, brushing his fingertips in small circles over the sorest part. "The doc warned me it might."

"Don't change the subject," Yankumi said unforgivingly. "You're not going to get any sympathy by playing up..._ahhhh_," she began to wail as she looked more carefully at where his hands were, and noticed the muddy red colour soaking through the bandages, as well as a several other brown-red patches dotted along his arm.

"Why the fuck would I try to do that. Yamaguichi," he snapped crossly. "It's not like I need to play up this arm any more, after what you did to... oh," he trailed off as he looked up at her, fully intending to continue having a go for her obstinacy and plain rudeness considering _she _did this to him in the first place, but he stopped when he noticed that she'd gone the colour of a dead fish.

"Shit, don't you pass out on me again," he said. "I won't be able to pick you up, you know."

"I-I-I-I'm g-g-onaa get th-th-the doc... the doc..." she stuttered sickly, and began taking shaky steps towards the door.

"Don't bother," he interrupted. "He said this might happen, and that as long as it doesn't look like I've ripped a stitch I'll be fine until tomorrow when he comes around again."

"You g-g-got sti-stitches?" she asked shakily.

"Of course," he said sharply. "I had glass _sticking out of my arm_, what the hell did you expect?"

"Oh dear," she murmured over a slow breath out, so that Shin could hardly hear what she even said. Eventually she looked up at him, and made her meaning clearer. "I really am so sorry, Shin," she explained.

"It's fine," he repeated honestly. "Just as long as you'll do _one _thing from now on."

"Yes? What's that?" she asked eagerly, perking up alarmingly in such a short space.

"Would you just let me love you without trying to kill or maim me constantly?" he groaned.

"I didn't mean to do either!" she wailed, wondering when everyone had started assuming the worst of her. "I just... I just..."

"You keep acting as if you don't return _any _of my feelings," he explained, "but I know you better than that, and I _know _you do."

"How could you even know such a thing?" she asked aloofly, crossing her arms. "You... you are just being presumptuous and arrogant, as you've _always _been."

"I'm neither," he retorted irritably, "and I don't know what planet your haywire mind is on, but as far as the _normal _world goes..."

"I'M NORMAL!" she bellowed offensively, and without thinking about it took a step towards Shin, who flinched also without even thinking about it, and as such wrenched about an arm he was meant to be keeping still.

"Fuu_uuuck,_" he groaned with the pain and grit his teeth hard, then fell to panting as it subsided again and returned to a dull throbbing. "Look, do you think you could lay off me just _once_, for a while?" he begged her, trying to make himself sound uninterested and confidant, but ending up far more desperate and weak. "You're stressing me out here, and I'm gonna rip out these stitches if I don't relax."

"You'll _what_?" she spluttered. "I wasn't doing any-"

"I know," he interrupted desperately. "I know you don't mean to, but I've lost way too much blood to be _arguing _with you all the time," he panted. "I can't keep on like this, in... fact, I'm getting kinda dizzy," he murmured, feeling his eyes glaze slightly as the room swayed around him.

Once he'd said it, Yankumi noticed immediately how pale and weak he looked.

"Oh! I'm SO sorry!" she barked, and Shin winced again.

"Don't friggin SHOUT!" he shouted, and then flinched at his own voice.

"_You're _the one shouting now!" she replied, trying to be quieter - not that Shin looked any more pleased about it.

"Stop, Yamaguichi," he commanded suddenly. "Please. Just. Stop."

"_Sorry_," she whispered. "_I'll just go now, okay?"_

"No, not okay," he said as stopped her. "There's something else you can do right now that'll make me feel a hundred times better."

"_What is it?" _she continued to whisper.

"You don't have to whisper all the time," he said wearily. "Just don't yell, or squeal, or make any of your usual sound... actually, whispering is good."

"_What, then?" _she questioned a little cautiously, and wasn't really all that surprised to see him extending a limp hand.

"Will you _please _come here?" he asked, and much to his surprise, she did. When she placed her hand in his like it was _really _that easy, Shin wondered for a moment if he hadn't passed out a few moments ago, making all of this a dream; she felt real enough, though, so he knew better than to question it.

"Take a seat," he said with a tug on her arm, and at a loss as to what _else _she could do, Yankumi sat down next to him. "You bust up my arm, not my legs," he said with a touch of good humour in his voice again. "I didn't mean on the sofa."

"I'm not sitting on your lap," she told him, and he looked very deliberately put out. "Oh don't," she sighed. "You don't need the strain."

"You barely weigh anything," he contradicted, and she had to consciously remind herself that he was flattering in order to get something he wanted.

"I don't _want _to," she announced conclusively, but stayed next to him at least in a show of compromise.

"Fine," he sighed, leaning his head back and letting his eyes droop shut.

"Are you feeling better?" she questioned politely after a little time had passed, reaching up as she spoke and brushing some hair out of his face so that she could see him properly.

"Much," he said warmly. "Especially if you keep on doing that." He twisted his head a little so that more of his hair passed through Yankumi's fingers, making her snigger and comb them through the red mess a _little _affectionately.

"What are you some kind of animal?" she scoffed, but Shin wasn't responsive, so she had to do it again before his mouth started to twitch with the makings of a smile he was too tired to complete.

"I like it," he murmured softly, slowly beginning to relax again. Yankumi looked carefully at his bandages, and decided that the spots of blood had dried to a dirty brown, which hopefully suggested that he wasn't bleeding fresh into them anymore. She almost forgot she was even messing with his hair for a while, just toying with it absent-mindedly, until she noticed how steady his breathing had become.

"Shin?" she said quietly, but he didn't answer as he was fast asleep. It was far, _far _too easy to go along with his accusations and 'feel something' for him when he was like this, she thought as she brushed back his eccentrically-coloured hair from his face. When they weren't fighting or arguing or apologising for nearly getting killed or killing each other, they really had got along so well. Fujiyama had pointed out to her before that Shin had been the first person she went to with trouble, and the one she'd always relied on to look after 3-D where she couldn't. How could she _not _feel something, she wondered as she felt his hand warm against hers, still wound together and resting on his knee.

She prodded him in the cheek inquisitively, and he still didn't stir. Sure that he was definitely asleep, she looked around once before leaning in and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, before slowly untangling her body from his. She noted that her heart _was _racing fit to bust, and she was pretty sure she was going red in the face again even though no one was watching, so maybe he did have _a _point about her.

It was kind of funny how all he had to do for her to finally confront her feelings was to fall asleep and _shut up_, she thought as she carefully got up and threw one of her grandpa's blankets over him.

When he woke up, it'd probably be another story entirely.

* * *

This is a superdialougey chapter, and it DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A PHYSICAL FIGHT IN IT. Which wasn't my intention for this story, but there has to be some balance, and the last chapter was pretty heavy on the fighting.

LAST CHAPTER? I THINK NOT.

Seriously, this thing is really being stubborn about ending. Maybe ONE more will tie it up.

Leave a raview plox!


	6. Then I set fire to our bed

Uh... so I know it's been like, a year or something ridiculous since I updatedd this, and I stopped RIGHT before the end, but it was annoying tying it in around the manga specials, as this is a manga-complient fic (note, the car scene is after special chapter 08) this takes place before and then soon after special 09 (all 3 parts), and I just got... distracted I guess. Then today on the spur of the moment I decided what the flippety, I'd read over this story again.

Then I just HAD to finish it, I stopped right before it gets saucy :P Hurray for Shin because oh dear god he's the hottest thing I've ever known.

* * *

Shin recovered slowly from having his arm made into a glass pincushion, but at least he _was _recovering. Circumstances were such that he and Yankumi didn't see very much of each other for quite a while, as she had commitments at work and he split his time between resting at home and university. Having a smashed up arm made taking notes somewhat difficult, so he had to enlist the help of a friend to keep up with classwork.

"So, how's it going with that girl of yours?" Hiroki – the same friend who had given him the saying about 'a kiss with a fist' – asked between classes, when at last he finally plucked up the nerve to probe into the scariest guy he knew's personal life.

"Don't even start," Shin groaned sarcastically. "She's kind of responsible for _this_." He watched his friend noticeably paling, and remembered that to normal people his and Yankumi's 'relationship' was a lot more insane than either of them realized.

"She didn't mean to do it," he said quickly, "it was just an accident." Granted, they had been having a fight at the time, but she hadn't _specifically _meant to do it.

"Well... she sure sounds like a... uh, handful," his companion mused. "Is she worth it?"

"Ten times over," Shin replied flawlessly, a smile on his face just thinking of how much he cared for her, even if she did put him in the hospital from time to time. "I'm hopeless."

"Well, the heart wants what the heart wants," Hiroki proclaimed – coming up with slogans and catchphrases was a peculiarity of his. Shin chuckled and wiggled his fingers inside his sling – it would be coming off soon, thankfully.

"Mine's obviously a masochist then," he joked. The day he left the Kuroda house after the fight, she'd barely said two words to him – _but_ she'd been blushing something chronic, and wouldn't look him in the eye. He'd wondered if their last exchange had anything to do with it, but there was nothing he could remember even half-worth getting embarrassed about.

"How long have you known her?" his friend inquired; Shin was an attractive guy, and had a bad-boy persona to rival no other – girls were always setting their eye on him – so he had to admit he was curious as to what sort of person could capture a guy like Shin's heart so strongly.

"Hm... since high school," Shin answered thoughtfully. "I guess that makes it nearly four years now."

"Wow, that's quite a while," Hiroki applauded. "So how did you meet her?"

"I just said," Shin replied a little snappily. "High school." There was an awkward pause, and Shin gradually became aware of his friend giving him a _very _confused look. "What?"

"Shirokin's an... all boys school, right?" Hiroki said cautiously, and Shin nodded. "So... so how did you meet _her_ there?"

"_Ohh_," Shin hummed – hopefully Hiroki hadn't been thinking his 'girlfriend' was some kind of gender-bending _boy_friend, though he supposed it would account for why he'd never taken up girls on their advances. "She was my homeroom teacher," he explained at last – saying it so casually, as if he wasn't personally aware of the scandalous nature of his confession.

However, Hiroki's mouth literally dropped open.

"You're..." he gasped. "You're dating your old _homeroom teacher?" _he whispered conspiratorially, stepping closer to Shin and staring up at him in awe.

"Sorta..." Shin murmured, deciding that trying to explain what was actually going on wasn't worth the effort of trying to describe the enigma in a tracksuit that was Yankumi.

"And she broke your arm?" Hiroki continued sensationally.

"She didn't _break _it," Shin corrected. "Just... shred it up a little... by mistake." He looked around a little guiltily, realising that every new piece of information made him seem like an even bigger pervert, and his reputation at the university really did _not _need to get any more outrageous.

"She must be... one tough lady," his friend settled on a phrase at last; 'maniac' or 'dominatrix' were probably not appropriate terms at this point. Even with one arm in a sling, he imagined Shin could beat him up just fine.

"Heh, more than you can imagine," Shin chuckled. "From _her_ back-" he cut himself off the moment he even _thought _about Yankumi's background. If Hiroki found out she was a Yakuza as well, he was sure he'd never _ever _live it down. "Oh wow, look at that time," he said bluntly. "I have to get to class."

"Wait... we're going to the same class... and it doesn't start for half an hour," Hiroki replied bemusedly, staring at his watch and then up at a clock on the wall to double-check.

"Extra classes," Shin lied – poorly. "I only just remembered... I'm, uh, late for them..." He grabbed his bag off his friend's shoulder and slung it across his good one. "So I'll see you later!" he rushed, and then strode away as quickly as he could without looking ridiculous. Any more ridiculous, at least. He probably needed Yankumi to accept that they were dating before he went around telling anyone about it _or _her, much less letting slip she was a Yakuza _and _his old teacher.

As if his personal life wasn't colourful enough already.

* * *

No matter how many times it happened, Yankumi was still surprised to arrive home and find Shin in her house. It was almost as if the _more _times it happened, the more alarmed she was.

"Grandpa, I'm hoooo-YOU!" she yelped, upon sticking her head around a door and seeing her Grandpa and Shin relaxing with a pot of tea between them. No sooner had Shin got his arm out of a sling and fully recovered, than he was _kidnapped _by the Oujo of another gang – swearing to make him her 'bridegroom' and take over the Kumi together. Of course, Yankumi had come to rescue him in the end, looking a state in what had probably _once _been a nice-looking dress.

The upside at least, was that she had confessed to him – albeit in a very dramatic way – but thereafter swore she was going to become a priestess, thanks to Shin's father's interference in the situation. It had only taken a day or so to straighten out things, but the last time he'd been at the house Kyou had nearly killed him and even Ryuichiro had snubbed him, so he'd felt the need to make amends.

Not to mention it would be nice to see Yankumi without marker pen all over her face. He got a kiss out of her in the end last time, but the marker pen had somewhat ruined the romance, and the vice-principal walked in half way through and threw an absolute _fit_.

"Welcome back," her Ryuichiro said warmly. "Would you like to join us for a cup of tea?"

"What is _he _doing here?" she rushed awkwardly, jabbing her finger at Shin as if he couldn't hear her.

"I can hear you," he pointed out, but she didn't seem to hear _that _either.

"Not a very hospitable way to greet your boyfriend, Kumiko," her grandpa tutted. "What have I told you about manners."

"My WHAT?" Yankumi shrieked, and sent Shin a _murderous _glare. "What has he..."

"I haven't said anything," Shin interjected defensively. "I think the boss has just, uh, _assumed_." Ryuichiro watched his granddaughter carefully, and then turned to look at Shin.

"You mean she hasn't?" he asked, stunned, and Shin shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine, boss," he remarked. "I mean, 'I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you' usually works for most people, but she's not _most people_."

"I'm still here!" Yankumi squawked, and both men turned to face her expectantly. "Oh... uh... look! We're not going out!" she proclaimed, and out of the two of them, her grandpa was the one who looked more disappointed.

"Oh," replied Shin, then paused for a second. "Do you want to?"

"I-" she spat, cutting herself off when she swallowed awkwardly.

"Really, Kumiko," her grandpa said dejectedly. "I thought you would have got on with it by _now. _I'm not getting any younger you know, and I'd like some great-grandchildren before I die."

"GRANDPA!" she shrieked, and then noticed Shin was laughing behind his hand. "STOP IT!" she bellowed. "This isn't funny!"

"It's a bit funny," Shin sniggered, and then carefully got up, making sure to mind his recovering arm. "Do you want to take a walk?"

"NO," she shot crossly.

"Let me rephrase. Do you want to take a walk, or do you want to stay here?"

"We can discuss baby names," Ryuichiro suggested gleefully. "Girls, I imagine. I don't see why the Kuroda tradition would end now." He was only _half _serious, but it did the trick, as Yankumi rushed forwards and grabbed Shin by the scruff of his neck.

"All right lets go," she snapped, dragging him out the door with her.

"Easy, _easy_," he pleaded as he staggered along behind her. "I'm only just back on fighting form." Stumbling out into the garden, he stopped defiantly and yanked his arm out of her hand, straightening himself up and running a hand through his hair before started a more relaxed amble down the path that encircled the house's grounds.

"I thought I was the only one you liked in the whole universe?" he parodied cheekily as she trotted alongside him, and her cheeks flushed and eyes started fastidiously examining the gravel path.

"Don't... don't mock me," she mumbled, shoving him a great deal harder than normal play-fighting should entail.

"I'm not, I think it's cute," he replied with a grin, reaching out an arm to poke her in the cheek as they walked. "Like you." She swatted away his hand irately, still hanging her head low.

"Did... you mean it...?" she said at last, almost whispering.

"Mean what? I think you're adorable," he complimented suavely, tugging on one of her ponytails. She punched him in the chest. "Okay, _ow_," he wheezed, "I'm not going to live long if you hit me every time I give you a compliment."

"When you asked if... _if_," she babbled.

"If you wanted to go out? Of course I did, silly woman." This time she slammed her fist down on top of his head. "Again, _ow_!" he snapped. "Please stop doing that, or I'm not going to be accountable for my actions."

Yankumi rolled her eyes – he had to be dumber than she thought if he was threatening to get into a fight with her again.

"Frankly, I assumed that we were going out already," he pointed out. "I mean, I don't normally go sticking my tongue down people's throats if I'm not going out with them." He gave her an unmistakably lurid look, and she felt her face warming.

"Well... you didn't _say_," she replied bashfully.

"Then I'm saying now," he said, taking her hand in his and holding it firmly. "Will you go out with me?" She didn't reply, as she was biting down too hard on her own lip to speak, but with a tracksuit-red face, she nodded and made a little squeaking sound.

"Good, I'm glad we sorted that out then," he added proudly, and tapped her on the shoulder. Out of reflex she turned to face him, and found her lips captured by his, his arm slung around her waist.

With a muffled squeal, she shoved him off her, and promptly slapped him across the cheek. If he hadn't just been slapped in the face, he probably would have looked like he had anyway, going by his expression.

"You JUST SAID you'd go out with me!" he exclaimed despairingly. "What the _hell _is it now, Yamaguichi?"

"You can't just come up and kiss me like that," she barked, scandalised by his blatant display of affection.

"I'm pretty sure being my girlfriend means I can," he retorted.

"In my _home_, with all my family around?" she argued shrilly, and then for good measure slapped him again, though not as hard. "Have you no respect or decency?"

Slowly, Shin put one hand to his face where he'd been hit, followed by the other, and dragged them up through his hair heavily, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"...You drive me absolutely crazy," he murmured vacantly, his eyes staring off over her head as his breath came in shallow puffs. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deeply, and Yankumi suddenly realised she'd just hit her own boyfriend. _Twice_. She'd barely been in a relationship thirty seconds and had messed it up.

She felt her eyes brimming as she prepared herself to hear him take it all back, to say he'd realised this was a terrible idea and he didn't love her at all. She told herself she should've known better than to think anyone she cared about could return her feelings.

"..._Please_ let me take you out tonight," Shin half-groaned, and Yankumi's mouth dropped.

"Buhwhuh," she grunted ineloquently. "Aren't you going to... dump me?"

"Do _what_? I only just got you," he scoffed. "You'll have to do a lot worse than that if you want to get rid of me," he taunted. "Nothing short of dead, I reckon." He reached out and grabbed her by the collar of her tracksuit, and then pulled her close to him, close enough to smell the chalk dust on her.

"Even when you're hitting and screaming at me, I still love you," he murmured into her ear. "I'm not going to stop. You infuriate me and drive me _crazy." _His fist tightened around her top, and his knuckles blanched totally white. "...But that might be what I love most. _So_," he said a little louder, letting her go and bringing a little more space between them once more. "Are you coming out on a date with me?"

Yankumi's mouth formed an almost-perfect circle. "Oh," she gulped lamely, completely bowled over by the sudden burst of intensity from Shin. "Right."

"I'm good to go now," he remarked brightly, like he hadn't just yanked her close and spilled his sordid heart in her ear and talked like when he said 'take you out' he just meant 'take _you_'. "You could always go and get ready now, and I'll go wait for you with the boss. I still never got around to apologising for the mixup the other day."

"Uh.. uh huh," she stammered. "O-okay."

"Right," Shin said cheerfully, but when he looked her in the eyes, there was something unmistakably _dark _in there. "See you in a bit, then."

He turned away and started to walk back in the direction of the house, only stopping to look up Kyou, Wakamatsu, Tetsuo and Minoru on the roof and give them a victorious thumbs up.

* * *

_You hit me once, I hit you back, you gave a kick, I gave a slap, you smashed a plate over my head... then I set fire to our bed._

* * *

Shin didn't even remember how the fight started this time. It was the first date, _real_, _actual, _she-agreed-it-was-a-date-too date with Yankumi, and the movie had gone well, the food had been good, and then somehow they ended up brawling in a back-alley somewhere.

His breath rasped from his chest, heavy and strained, as she slammed him back against the wall and punched him in the stomach. All the air left his lungs and he nearly choked, but had enough thought to wrap an arm around her waist and shove her back a few steps, letting him slump back and try to steal just one decent breath.

He vaguely remembered something about his becoming a Yakuza lawyer, or becoming the next Kumichou, or maybe he'd just made a lewd comment she took the wrong way, but she'd leaned across the table and hit him.

Problem was, instead of taking it and letting the other diners feel awkward, he coolly hit her back. It escalated from there. She kicked him so hard he fell back off his chair, so he'd slapped her to try to get some sense back into her before they were thrown out.

Which they were – at least he didn't have to pay for the meal.

Only, on the way out she'd lashed out for a passing waiter and ripped a plate from the man's hand, then smashed it over the back of Shin's head as he was bundled out the door by two more waiters. He'd stormed out of the restaurant and was half way down the street before she caught up with him, at which point he'd grabbed her by the neckline of a rather nice top, and flung her down into the alleyway they were throwing each other around.

He didn't have much time to catch his breath before she punched him – he didn't imagine she remembered why they were fighting any more either, but he didn't have much of an opportunity to say that at present. He spat, tasting blood, and pulled himself back upright; she threw a punch and he caught the hand, crushing her fist tightly in his hand as she threw out her other hand.

He caught that too, and then with her own momentum spun her around to swap places, putting her against the wall as he pressed forwards and held her wrists down. He pushed his leg between hers, and his mouth came close enough to her ear to leave a bloodstain on her temple.

"I told you I'm not accountable for my actions if you keep hitting me," he said lowly, and Yankumi became very suddenly aware of just where his thigh was and how hard his chest was pressed against hers. He shifted his weight and unmistakably _ground_ against her, and the nature of the fight was completely different; or had it always been like that?

"I'm seriouly gonna fuck you senseless in a minute," he groaned, and it was so crude, and _so inappropriate_ in so many ways, and all Yankumi did was close her eyes and try not to think about how she was straddling his leg.

He let go of her hands – though she would have been able to get away if she'd wanted to – and braced them on either side of her waist, resisting the urge to lift her up there and then and to hell with the rest of it. Her hands flew out and wrapped around his neck, trying to pull his bloodied mouth against hers, but Shin pulled back warily and avoided contact.

"Not a good idea," he groaned. "Not here. I owe you more than this." Even though it killed him to pull away, he did, trying not to crack at the sight of Yankumi panting against the wall, hair a state and his blood smeared across her cheek. She'd never looked sexier.

"Why..." she gasped, her eyes only just refocusing on him as her mind caught up with her body, "why were we fighting again?"

"Who cares," he retorted hotly. "My place isn't very far. From here, I mean," he added a little awkwardly. He may have been fantasising about just this sort of thing for years, but he realised it might be new to her, and she might let herself get swept away by him. He didn't want to end up pushing her into something she didn't want to do, just because they were playing rough.

"Oh," she mumbled with a lot more awareness, and Shin bit his lip, not caring that it was going to make it bleed even more. "_Good," _she panted, and he let go of a breath he hadn't realised he was was holding, then found her mouth on top of his; for the first time, she'd kissed _him_, and it was beyond fantastic. He let go of restraint for a moment, his tongue tangling with hers as his fingers tangled in her hair, but reeled back in before things got too heated.

"Come on, _sensei_," he mocked breathily, knotting her fingers with his and half-stumbling back out to the street. "Let's get you to bed."

* * *

_Love sticks, sweat drips, break the lock if it don't fit, a kick in the teeth is good for some, a kiss with a fist is better than none._

The End_  
_

* * *

And then the rest plays out in my head and probably belongs on or something. Doh hoh hoh.

In case it wasn't clear, the 'set fire to our bed' thing is all symbolic for sex'n stuff. Oh and I don't condone domestic abuse or anything like that, like the original song, this is about the nature of Shin and Yankumi's relationship, which is violent but not abusive. Plus people are into ALL sorts if you know what I mean ;)

Well, give or take a massive hiatus, this is FINISHED. Hope it's up to standard. Review if you're as hot for Shin as I am (fans self).


End file.
